


Learning Curve

by JoJo



Category: Alias Smith and Jones
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-15
Updated: 2010-09-15
Packaged: 2017-10-11 20:50:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/116956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoJo/pseuds/JoJo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Heyes learns the hard way that he's the only person a seriously injured Kid Curry can rely on</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The night had entered its quietest time, that hour before dawn begins to scratch at the surface of the black horizon.

Unwillingly, Hannibal Heyes had just let his eyes drop shut, even though he remained aware of the rock sticking into his back and his coccyx jammed into the hard ground. The evening's trail-supper hadn't appealed, and there was only coffee and grits slopping around in his gut, along with a hearty dollop of irritation, a more or less indigestible mix.

Making a living through honest toil was already beginning to tick Heyes off mightily. Here they were, neck deep in their second trail job, and it had turned trickier than a sack of snakes.

His eyes popped open again. You'd think getting some cows from A to B would be pretty straightforward, especially when there really weren't many of them, the trail-boss was paying over the odds, and the food was half-decent. But it seemed that, in the world of legal employment, your employer didn't always tell you everything you needed to know. Like, the whole time you were on the trail you'd be at risk of being jumped by your employer's sworn enemies. Heyes racked his brains to try and remember if he had always told the gang what they needed to know before they set off on a job, and he decided, hand on heart, that he had, especially if there was going to be unusual dangers involved. Lotta details he'd leave out, but that was because half the time they didn't know their left from their right, but he was sure he'd always told them enough to keep them safe.

Because he sure as hell had never wanted to be looking at someone's pocket-watch and thinking .... _damn_ ... _what's gone wrong?_ Like he could see Robert Chandler, the trail boss, was doing right now, and trying to look as if he wasn't.

Heyes shifted his back, cracked his knuckles, shut his eyes just to rest them.

One hour over time he had almost expected. Two hours could be explained away pretty easily. Three hours was getting worrisome.

But it had been nearly five hours now since Kid Curry had been due back in camp, and the night watch had come on duty, casting long looks over at Smith as if to say ... well, you never shoulda let him go now, should you?

The original debate had been a relatively easy one. Chandler had brought everyone to a halt and they'd made camp while the sun was still high. He announced a plan to parley, which involved one of their number running a message back down the trail. Heyes had given the Kid that count-us-out-of-it look and it was returned so strongly that he had a job not to snigger. But then the two Chandler boys, barely out of their teens, had volunteered, only to have their father wave them away. Usually Robert Chandler drove his sons hard, so Heyes had known at once that this meant there was tough trouble on the cards.

"It needs a big, strong man to go in there, someone who can handle himself," Chandler had said airily. "Someone they don't know."

Which meant Smith, Jones, Phillips or Green.

The Kid offered in the end, of course, because he thought his gun would keep him safer. But he was nowhere near as big and solid as Phillips and Green, who were hunched over their rifles thinking all sorts of thoughts, looking over at Joshua Smith and being mighty glad they hadn't been obliged to ride into the midst of the Websters with a message. They'd worked for Chandler before and knew what his overriding concerns were. Not them, that was for sure.

"I'm not happy about this," Heyes had muttered as his partner had saddled up, the roll of paper handed to him by Chandler tucked into the right-hand pocket of his sheepskin.

"Neither am I, Heyes, but it strikes me that we need to get this whole mess sorted out sooner than later. I for one am tired of being in the middle of a rancher's feud."

"I know that, Kid."

"So I'll just ride along there, give them the paper and ride along back. And, with any luck, they'll take the deal and we can finish this job and collect our money."

Heyes had raised his brows at this blatant optimism. It sounded downright peculiar coming from the mouth of Jedediah Curry. "Well all right," he said. "I'll save you some supper."

"If it's beans, don't bother," the Kid had said, a very faint grin glimmering through the late afternoon shadows. He looked over Heyes' shoulder as Chandler walked up.

"Thaddeus," said the rancher, "You don't need to do any talking, you hear me? Just pass on the message to one or other of the Websters and then come on back."

"And try not to get your head blown off," Heyes had added.

Kid Curry swung himself up into his saddle. "I'll do my best." He tipped his hat in the direction of his temporary boss and exchanged a little look with his partner. Then he was gone.

And ever since the time he had been due back, Heyes had been getting the cloying feeling that something was not right, a feeling that skittered up the top of his spine into his hair and left his midriff feeling all knotted and busy like a mess of indiarubber bands.

Sitting on his own by the beginning of the trail, he had at first felt wide awake, then crippled by sleepiness. A moment or two after his lids had dropped the second time was when he heard the sound of hooves clopping through the dust towards camp. He was on his feet at once, followed closely by Chandler, who had his gun in his hand. Heyes didn't even bother. He knew the familiar rhythm, even though it was slower and more cautious than he would have expected.

A horse slunk into the camp out of the gloom, her rider slouched low in the saddle. It passed Heyes and Chandler and walked across to the other mounts where they heard a low voice rein her in.

"Welcome back, Thaddeus," Chandler said, following after, Heyes in his wake. "Boy are we glad to see you safe and sound."

There was silence and no movement from the rider.

Heyes came closer. He knew the stance was all wrong. They both saw Curry shift one boot to lift it out of the stirrup, tightening his hands on the saddlehorn as he did so. The leg swung round and Heyes immediately stepped right in to the flank and reached up to take a hold of Curry round the waist.

"OK, easy there," he said quietly. "Slowly does it. I got you."

He took Kid Curry's weight against him and helped to bring him down to the ground, not letting go for a second. Curry managed to stand for just a moment, his head bent, and then his knees seemed to go from under him. Chandler had realized something was wrong by this time and he got round the other side to help stop him hitting the ground with a thump. Between them they lowered him straight down, laying him flat in the dust.

"Muriel!" Chandler shouted. "Muriel, get over here!"

Heyes flicked off the tan hat. There was moonlight enough to see the blood by, dried up where it had dripped steadily from the nose and pulpy mouth, but still slick coming from a thick wound above one eye. The other eye was swollen shut. There was grit and dust all over his hair and lips and at first they couldn't hear a breath coming from him. While they'd tended one another's fat lips and bruised cheekbones on any number of occasions since childhood, Heyes had never seen the Kid's face so broken up before and it made his stomach turn over.

"Let's move him near the fire," Chandler said, but Heyes stopped him with an arm.

"Wait a second," he said, still scared by the way his partner had been holding himself on to his horse by a combination of willpower and luck. Opening out the sheepskin he picked carefully at the buttons of the shirt that had looked mainly cream this morning. It was thickly speckled now and covered in red and brown stains. The moonlight was good enough, too, to illuminate the damage when Heyes gingerly lifted the Henley and loosened the Kid's belt. Boot-shaped bruising, bleeding under the skin from neck to stomach. They went in all directions, from right under the arms to deep in the abdomen.

Heyes shut his eyes, a pulse beating in his temple that might have been panic or might have been rage.

"We'll be careful," he heard Chandler's voice say, accompanied by the sudden intake of breath from his wife as she came up to see. "He looks busted up pretty bad, but we need to get him to the fire, Joshua." He turned his head. "Need your help, boys." Phillips and Green emerged from their dark corners.

They picked up the prone body between them and got close to the fire where Muriel Chandler had lain a bedroll and a pile of blankets for a pillow. In the flickering light the distortions on Kid Curry's face looked worse than ever. When they laid him down it was not gentle enough to prevent an exhalation of distress, which seemed tangled up at the back of Curry's throat like he didn't dare let it out.

There was emotion bubbling up in Heyes now. The Kid was an everlasting stoic when it came to real pain. It had been drummed into them both from an early age that the worse it hurt the more you had to hide it, or the consequences did not bear thinking about.

Curry's good eye opened slowly and he looked around the blurry faces hovering above, searching for one in particular. When he found it his gun arm shot out and gripped at Heyes' sleeve to pull him down. Even the hand was marked, bruised on the back and bloody under the fingernails.

"I'm listenin'" Heyes said, bending forward so a slight breath touched his cheek.

"They got the message," the Kid wheezed, that one eye incongruously bright. The fire was reflecting in Hannibal Heyes' dark gaze and the Kid was drawn to it like a moth seeking light.

"Yeah?" Heyes said gently. "And what was the answer?" He could feel the Kid's fingers trying to keep a hold of him but slipping away.

Curry let out a little sound that could almost have been a laugh. "I'm the answer," he croaked.

Heyes straightened up a little, replacing the clutch of sleeve with his own hand. "I don't think they're going to parley, Mr Chandler," he said.

"Well that means they'll be coming to try and take these heifers by force," was Chandler's response. He looked over at his wife. "Muriel, do what you can for Thaddeus. The rest of us better get prepared."

Heyes wanted to stand up and talk properly to the rancher but the Kid was clinging on to his fingers like a drowning man to a rope. "Mr Chandler, he needs a doctor. You can see that. He could be bleeding inside. He needs fixing up."

"Muriel will fix him up," Chandler said in his straight, dogged way.

Heyes let anger wash over him. He came up on to his feet, letting the Kid's hand drop. "That's not good enough," he heard his voice say, stony and stubborn. "This isn't about your cattle anymore, or getting paid or what the Websters might do. This is about my partner here being seriously injured and needing help. You put him in this position, Mr Chandler. Seems to me like he's your responsibility ....your first responsibility ... right now."

Chandler looked down at Thaddeus Jones. He could tell it was serious. As soon as Smith had taken him down off the horse he could tell it was serious. And it was his responsibility. But so were the three hundred head of prime dairy heifers, snorting and twitching in the moonlight at the other side of the trees. Uniquely-bred dairy heifers that he'd always been prepared to protect with his life. They were his sons' inheritance, nurtured especially for them, and needing the green grass at Lycett's Plain. The goddamned Webster brothers weren't going to get them. Not if he could help it.

If it had been one of his boys now ... if it had been Lucas or Christian .... that would have been different. But these hired hands had to take care of themselves, he reasoned. Half the time they came on board and you couldn't trust them as far as you could sling them. He had been slightly suspicious of Smith and Jones from the start, with their inseparable posture and private jokes, even though they had worked well and kept themselves to themselves.

Muriel had been to get a basin of water, some cloths and iodine and Heyes dropped back down on to his knees next to her. "You got any laudanum in your medicine bag, Mrs Chandler?" She nodded. "Good," he said, "We're gonna need it." He closed the shirt and jacket and pulled up a couple of blankets. When he laid a hand on the Kid's sweat-flattened hair, the blue eye crawled open again. The glitter in it was almost extinguished. Now it held a silent appeal. Heyes glanced up at Chandler, pacing a little way away, now flanked by his sons, Phillips and Green. Over by the wagon Mrs Chandler was rummaging.

"Damn, Kid," he said, pressing an iodine-soaked cloth down on a split cheekbone. "You done gone and walked yourself into trouble this time. What am I gonna do with you?"

Curry huffed a little, grimacing as the air moved around in his chest. It felt tight enough to snap him in two. "I d'livered the message didn't I?" he got out. "What more d'you want?"

Heyes kept his face neutral. He bathed the swollen eye until water dripped down Curry's neck making him roll his head away.

"How many of them were there, Kid?" he asked.

Curry rolled his head back, weighing him up. He knew the face of a Hannibal Heyes working up to a seething rage. It was a rare face, a face not many people knew. Curry had mostly been on the bad end of it. Not this time, though. "Forget it," he answered, forcing it out.

"Yeah? How many?" Heyes paused in his dabbing, fixing the Kid with his most unbending stare. It had worked very many times in the past, cowing Curry when he was beyond listening to any verbal reason, reducing him to muttering acquiescence.

"Four," he mumbled. "Or five." He raised his working hand and plopped it down on his partner's forearm. "I didn't tell 'em, and they didn't follow me."

"Didn't tell them what, Thaddeus?" Heyes asked, aware that Mrs Chandler was back again with a roll of bandaging and small glass bottle.

"Where we're headed," sighed Curry, patting the arm kindly, trying to signal calm.

"They tried to beat that out of you?" Heyes said out loud. His voice had notched up half an octave.

Curry sighed again, and his hand slid off Heyes' arm and plunked on the ground.

"He's out cold," Muriel Chandler remarked un-necessarily.

Heyes moved away. "I'll be with you in a minute," he said. "First I gotta talk to your husband."

Chandler saw him coming and folded his arms.

"I know what you're going to say, Joshua," he said, "and I'm real sorry for it. But I can't do nothing right now. I know that family. They'll be aiming to jump us on the trail ...."

Heyes interrupted him with a hand. "Hold it," he said. "He didn't tell them anything."

"What?"

"He didn't tell them where you're headed or who you're selling to, Mr. Chandler. He just delivered the message."

"What they beat him for then?"

Heyes cleared his throat. He felt uncommonly like slugging some sense into this single-minded man. "To try and find out ... but, like I say, he didn't tell them."

Chandler digested that, glancing back over at the fireside.

"Stubborn is he, your Thaddeus? Wouldn't have had him down as loyal to a ranch boss and a herd of cows."

Heyes sucked his teeth. "I think he was more trying to protect the rest of us two-legged types," he said.

"Oh."

"He needs a doctor," Heyes said, aiming to sound practical rather than desperate.

"I can see that, Smith, but we ain't got many choices. We have to be on the trail in a coupla hours now. He can go in the wagon. Muriel'll ride with him. We ain't got time to go for a doctor anyways, even if we knew where the nearest one was. And I need every man jack of you now that Thaddeus' gun is out of action. Listen, if we can get through tomorrow without Carl Webster bushwhacking us, then we'll be four or five miles outside of Marionsville I reckon. You could have him in a doctor's office by sundown."

A day in the wagon. Jolting along aside a dust-cloud of hooves, waiting for a bunch of addled, greedy neighbors to try and rustle the whole herd with gunpower. To Heyes' eye the Kid looked like he shouldn't be moved. Not even an inch.

Just whose idea had it been to take this job anyway? Herding cattle was not a natural job for either of them, although Heyes had speculated out loud that perhaps it would be akin to herding Wheat and Kyle. Curry more than Heyes had baulked at the whole notion, even while acknowledging that, in their new and unfamiliar careers as honest working men, they had to start somewhere.

"Look at 'em though, Kid," Heyes had said as they had leaned over the rail in a pink sunset looking over the herd while Robert Chandler and his family waited for their decision. "Look at those big, gentle eyes ... they're not going to give us any trouble. Come on, don't I always know what's best for us? Chandler seems a decent enough man. Seems like a good way to start going straight. And it's good money."

"It's dust and beans," Curry had groused.

"That's a yes then?"

"It's dust and beans," Curry repeated stubbornly.

Stubborn. Yes, he was that all right.

But of course, neither of them had known about the little bit of trouble that Chandler expected on the trail. The whole sorry story of the Webster-Chandler feud and the fate of these pretty, long-lashed cattle.

"I'll tell him yes, then," Heyes had said eventually, delivering an encouraging smile. And on the first night, as they had sat comfortably side by side in camp, stomachs full of Mrs. Webster's bean-free cooking, the Kid had nudged him.

"You know what, Heyes?"

"What?"

"Sometimes - only sometimes, mind - maybe you really do know what's best for us."

*

Kid Curry came out of his laudanum haze with the fear of God in the pit of his stomach and only a sketchy grasp of what had happened to him. As to where he was, he had no idea.

Something like daylight pressed down on his closed eyelids. He got them open, one of them with difficulty, and the light now pressed down on his eyeballs. Then abruptly the light disappeared and he was plunged into an inky blackness that made him jump. Immediately pain sat heavily on his chest, driving away the impulse to breathe. As he fought to suck in air he heard a peculiar sound like an ancient pair of bellows wheezing and realised it was him.

"That's what I was afraid of," said a wheedling, unfamiliar voice floating out of reach in the black. "You need to take it real easy, son."

Blinking open his eyes the Kid found the black was less dense than it first appeared. Tiny lights were flickering at the corners of his vision. Nothing but pain, though, rolling up from way below the surface. The intense drumming in his head was enough to make him cry out, only he couldn't get the air, he couldn't get the air ... and where the hell was Heyes ... that thought made him flex the fingers of one hand, a hand he remembered that a boot had stamped on. His gun hand.

_Damnit, Heyes, this is your fault._

Standing a way back from the narrow little bed, Hannibal Heyes felt like throwing up, good and proper. He was hungry and trail-weary, lanced through and through with anxiety, and they'd finally got the Kid into Marionsville, the hickest, shittiest little town Heyes had ever had the misfortune to come across. All of Mrs Chandler's supply of laudanum had been used up across the day as the wagon rattled its way cross-country and by the time they'd stopped Kid Curry was motionless and blue-lipped.

And Marionsville's resident physician, Dr. Emmett Pike, hovering about over the bed like a malign spirit, smelled of unwashed clothes and whisky.

Frankly, things weren't looking good.

"I have to go," Heyes said tightly. "What you gonna do for him?"

"Not much ah can do," Dr. Pike replied, looking at the dark-haired man keenly. "Bind up those busted ribs, get some fluid in him and wait for the fever." He tapped one earpiece of his listening tubes, an instrument so grimy that Heyes hardly believed it could still function. "Th' boy's gonna be real sick from all that laudanum. Ain't gonna help. What you leaving him for?"

"I'll be back soon as I can," Heyes said, and brushed past the doctor, sliding his butt on to an upturned box next to the head of the bed which was what served as a chair. The doctor fuddled his way politely out of earshot.

"Kid," Heyes said softly, before brushing the back of his forefinger along a stretch of jawline that was unmarked. As he feared, the touch jolted Curry back, another agonizing attempt at a full lungful of air accompanying the opening eyes. "Easy now, no need to get all in a twist." He moved his hand and pressed it down on the nearest shoulder but only lightly. He really didn't know where to touch without hurting him, although he felt like he wanted to scoop him up off the bed and run away to safety. "Listen to me, but try and keep still."

The Kid's eyes were struggling to keep open and what Heyes could detect from their sludgy color told him his partner's senses were sluggish to say the least. "I'm going back to camp now," he said, making his voice reasonable because he knew the Kid would pick up the tiniest hint of negativity and lock on to it, half-killed or no. "Need to fulfill the contract to Chandler, or else I don't know how we're going to pay to get you well. Sooner I get back there, sooner I can be with you."

The Kid continued to watch him. His fingers curled a little against the sheet. Heyes stroked the face again, with the whole back of his hand this time. "So you just be calm. Be still."

"Need your help, feller, to get the binding on," the doctor said, re-appearing at Heyes side. Heyes glanced up at him. Pike seemed to know what he was doing, but he seemed curious about the patient rather than particularly anxious to care for him.

And when it came to caring, Dr. Pike was of the opinion they needed to be quick rather than gentle and Heyes wondered how he ever got to be a doctor, or even if he actually was. As they got the musty-smelling, dun-colored binding on between them, Heyes saw the mess of the Kid's back, the deep swellings around kidneys and spine. He could almost hear Curry's voice saying gloomily goddamnit, Heyes, 'm gonna be pissing blood for weeks.

"You don't need to be brave with us, young feller," observed the doctor, casting a twinkling eye over at Heyes, whose desire to throttle him was almost overpowering. "We know it's hurting you like the devil. You cuss and groan all you like. Whoa there now, here he goes ..." and he snatched up a basin just as Curry's stomach rejected its snarling pit of bile and poison. "Let it out now, don't want to choke yourself do you?" The doctor let Heyes take charge of keeping him on the bed as the combination of vomiting and gravity threatened to propel him on to the floor.

Heyes could have shed tears but he knew that there was a time and a place, and this wasn't it. Not yet. He had one hand pressed very hard into the Kid's breastbone and the other posted on the back of his neck. Between each convulsion Curry went limp. When they got him propped back on the pillows, Heyes was shaking, and annoyed with himself for it. He'd always been glad that being gang leader had precluded him from playing the role of medicine-man as well. It had usually been Lobo who'd taken charge of broken limbs and fevers in Devil's Hole and Heyes had kept well away from it. Dr. Pike took away the basin, saying cheerfully, "Think I'd better go and get Mrs Blaine for some nursin'. And a shot of whisky for you, Mr. Smith."

Heyes wiped away some flecks from the Kid's lips with a cloth. His eyes were fluttering between open and closed, twitching under some evil force. Heyes let his head lean down, feeling optimism draining away from him like a tap had been turned on.

"Fuck it, Kid," he whispered as his forehead knocked against Kid Curry's own, "I've gotta go. I've gotta go and leave you like this. I don't know if this doctor knows what the hell he's doing and I don't know if you'll be here when I get back." He dragged up his head, looking down at the sick face. "You gonna be, Kid?"

Curry's eyes remained shut, but his lips parted and a raspy word squeezed out. "Git." Somehow he managed to imbue it with disgust.

Heyes laid his fingers against the jawline one last time, but he didn't move them. Just left them there a few seconds. Then he said, "Back in no time," and dragged himself off the box and away from the bed.

Out in front of the doctor's ramshackle house there were only a few people on the main street of Marionsville. The sparse population and air of melancholia told Heyes this was a town on the skids. He swung up on to his horse and rounded her towards the gathering darkness.

_Is this the end you deserve, Kid? Spitting up your guts in a lonely hole with nobody but a drunk and a Mrs Blaine to help you out?_

Leaving the city limits he was going so fast that his hat blew back off his head and wheeled around his neck by the strap.

_Damnit, Jed. Thought we'd agreed long ago that it just doesn't pay to be a hero? What you going back on it for now?_

Back in the house, Dr. Pike came in with the shot of whisky and found Mr. Smith gone. He'd sent out for Mrs. Blaine and he supposed that between them they could make a job of keeping the boy alive until Smith got back with some money. Looking down on him now, Pike felt more than a little unsure. He'd seen his share of cases like this -- beat-up cowpokes and hustlers dying with their stomachs full of blood or their lungs full of froth. The doctor tipped the whisky shot down his own throat and then jammed his earpieces back in. Leaning down to wedge the stethoscope into the bandaging, his eyes roved over the face beneath. Could hardly tell what the young feller looked like, just that he had some fine structure under all that bruising. He was still listening to the beat of the man's heart cantering towards a rising fever when Mrs Blaine arrived with her basket of supplies.

"Lydia," he said, straightening up unsteadily, "I'm glad you're here."

Lydia Blaine, a small, untidy woman in her mid-fifties, took off her bonnet with large red hands and came over to view. "Dear me," she said. "Dear, dear me. What a mess. What's to be done?"

"The best we can, Lydie," he said with a toothsome smile. "The best we can. His partner's gone out to collect some money to pay for his care. And on top of that ... well, whether he makes it or not, this young feller could bring us in a sweet $10,000. Imagine that. And his partner the same again."

He laughed a slight, tobacco-rich laugh.

Mrs. Blaine peered a little closer. "Who in the world has gone and fallen into your care, Emmett?" she whispered.

"This feller here," said Pike in confident tones, poking down on the bandaging with one finger, "Is Kid Curry. Hannibal Heyes himself is desperate to be back as quick as ever he can. And that, my dear Lydie, is what they call bounty."

Lydia Blaine regarded the patient rather fearfully. "Kid Curry?" she hissed. "You sure about that?"

Dr. Pike made a snapping gesture with his fingers to dismiss her lack of trust. "Don't I always remember a face?" he said, "You know I do, an' specially the face of a man who held up a train I's sitting on. Hannibal Heyes, large as life, and the rest of his gang. Did I never tell you the story? Musta been two years ago when I's still in Wyoming. Quite an event, let me tell you. I don't recall Curry being there, but this has gotta be him. They run together ... and Heyes was treating him like his own begotten kin just now."

Mrs. Blaine's eyes grew round. She stepped forward and pushed a handful of damp, cinnamon hair back from the young's man forehead to the crown, trying to get a closer look at his poor, busted-up face. Mercy. A genuine, real-life outlaw. Lying in Emmett Pike's back room. Worth $10,000. And they didn't even really need to keep him alive.

The genuine, real-life outlaw whimpered out some nonsense as he felt the rough touch.

The good woman chucked him under the chin. "Now, honey, you just lie there real pretty and quiet," she said, "while Emmett and me have a little drink on your behalf."

Kid Curry flexed his fingers feebly again, but what he searched for was gone.


	2. Chapter 2

_There's water over the next hill._

That was what someone had told Kid Curry more than once.

_Sleep a little more, then there's water over the next hill._

He couldn't remember now where and when he'd been told it. Could remember the voice, though, clear as a mountain stream, and it seemed to be missing.

"Shouldn't we feed him?"

The question was asked over the top of Kid Curry's head. It was a woman's voice and he didn't know it, didn't like it.

"What fer? He ain't gonna want to swaller. He wakes up, give him more water."

That voice was even worse. A scratchy, fake sort of a voice that had no embodiment.

"He just hacked it all up, Emmett."

"'S'OK. He's driftin' off again."

"Why don't you go get the Sheriff?"

"He's out of town again. Deputy Cotton won't want the trouble, you know what he's like. 'Sides, our messed-up gunslinger here ain't exactly dangerous. I want to make sure Heyes comes right back here for him. 'M in the mood for a double bounty, Lydie. And so should you be."

"Well shall we tie him up?"

Footsteps getting nearer. Breath, sweet and sour with onions and liquor, drifting near his face. "You hear me, Curry?"

_Miserable, sonofabitch excuse for a doctor. I can hear ya._

A hand slapping at his swollen cheek, none too gentle.

"See there, Lydie? See there, feller? Your gun-toting days are over, boy. You're gonna make Dr and Mrs Pike rich enough to get out of Marionsville."

A little tinkling laugh in the background.

_Oh please. Leave out the romance. Just get me the goddamned water. Ain't much to ask._

Footsteps walking away. A door shutting. Silence.

No, not silence. The ancient bellows, wheezing in and out, sending a dust-cloud into the back of his throat each time.

_Water over the next hill. That's right, Heyes, keep me going. You keep me putting one foot in front of the other._

*

Robert Chandler was relieved when Smith rode back into camp, some hour or so after Phillips had got back with the wagon. He felt like he had done more than enough now to show he was a good boss. Letting them take Jones off to Marionsville, leaving him three guns down, that was altruism alright. They could have no complaints now. Smith looked like a thundercloud, mind.

"Day and a half more to Lycett's Plain, Joshua," he said. "And the prettiest mess of land you will ever have seen in your life. Tobias Lycett will be waiting. And that's when you'll get what's due you."

"Any sign of the Websters?" Heyes growled.

"Nope. Looks like Thaddeus threw them right off the scent. Good plan of mine to send that message. How'd he look when you got him into town?"

Like each breath's going to be his last, Heyes thought. "Bad enough," was what he said. He still felt like punching Chandler in his self-satisfied teeth.

"He's being looked after right?"

Heyes could have gagged on his own bitter laughter. "There's a doctor," he said, "but I'm not sure he'll stay sober enough to do much good."

Chandler tutted. "You know, Joshua," he said chidingly, "You are the darnedest, you really ought to learn to trust people more."

Now why would I want to do that, Heyes thought, and didn't like the way that thought made him feel. As if he'd just discovered some sick joke about mankind that he'd never heard before.

The attack from the Websters never came. Without help from the Chandlers' messenger they never did manage to get back on the right trail, and in any case Carl Webster was rightly nervous about what his boys had done. He'd seen the beating and kicking and felt a little bad that he hadn't intervened. Still, the tight-lipped cowboy had been dumped back on his horse and sent on his way -- he'd been in the saddle as he disappeared into the dark. Webster wouldn't have him followed because he was afraid they'd be bushwhacked themselves. There would be other ways, at other times, to get back at them.

Chandler was increasingly ecstatic. All his plans were coming to fruition.

"When things have settled down, Joshua," he said, "when you've gone back to Marionsville and found Thaddeus sitting down eating a steak large as life... well, if you like, I'll come in with you to see the Sheriff there about what the Websters did to him. Common assault I'd say. He may want to pursue it."

Heyes indulged in a brief vision of the Kid chewing healthily on a piece of beefsteak, and then shook his head firmly.

"No thank you, Mr Chandler. Going to the Sheriff won't be necessary."

"No? Why not? Thought you'd want to see justice done."

"What I want .... what we want ... is just to collect our money and be gone."

"And Thaddeus?"

"Oh he'll feel the same."

"Well I don't agree with you," Chandler stated in his maddening, cocksure way. "Thaddeus seems like the kinda feller that wouldn't let something like that go. He's got the marks to prove what happened. He coulda died."

Still mighta done, Heyes thought.

"Believe me," he said, "Thaddeus is the most peace-loving man you could meet. He'll just want to forgive and forget."

Chandler made a face as if this was anathema to him. He shrugged. "As you like," he said.

The money was put into Heyes' hands some forty-eight hours after he first left Marionsville. The feel of it gave him a little lift, even though he realized he should know better by now than to think that money could solve your problems.

When he rode back into Marionsville it was mid-afternoon, and there was still hardly a body to be seen on the street. The door was shut on the general store, and there was no-one going either in or out of the saloon opposite. This time round Heyes noted that the Bank was boarded up and something had been painted over the sign that once said "Hotel". Four kids with their mangy dog were sitting outside it throwing stones into a steel bucket.

Shitty little windblown hole, he thought, tying up his own horse and the Kid's outside the doctor's. He felt deeply pessimistic about what he was going to find. Most days since they had turned up at Lom's and put it to him that they might try for amnesty, Heyes had felt he might never again believe, as he had done for years and years, that things would somehow always turn out for the best. The dilution of such concentrated optimism made him feel like he'd aged. His gloved hand rapped on the door and he strained his ears to hear something inside. A second knock brought a woman to answer. She was flushed and slightly breathless, the long white apron she wore streaked with unpleasant-looking stains and the odd blot of blood. Heyes stomach turned over painfully. He was light-headed with sudden fear.

"Mrs Baines?" he managed to get out. Although he didn't know it, with his trail-worn black pants and hat, his two-day beard and strained face he looked for all the world like a dangerous outlaw who might do something unexpected and violent at any moment.

"Well!" she exclaimed, clutching a hand to her throat and taking a large step backwards, "it's .... it's ... you!" Immediately she turned her head and bellowed into the dim interior, "Emmett! He's back! That .... he's back!"

Scuffling footsteps preceded Dr Pike, lurching slightly out of the gloom to the doorway. He was wreathed in smiles, however, and Heyes dared to presume that the Kid wasn't dead.

Without being asked he stepped inside, trying not to notice the sour smells that assailed him. "Dr Pike," he said, "How's my friend?"

"Oh he's fine, fine," Dr Pike said, "Doing very well. Wouldn't you say, Lydie, dear?"

"Very well!" she trilled, shutting the door behind them and keeping her distance. "Fast asleep right at the moment. But doing very well. Such a good patient. So quiet."

The doctor and Mrs Baines looked at each other, smiling pleasantly. A small chill ran up the back of Heyes' neck, making his hair stand on end.

"I'd like to see him, right away," he said in a dry voice.

"You wouldn't want to wake him," Mrs Baines said. "He needs the sleep."

"No really ... I'd like to see him."

"Well, well, come in here first," Dr Pike blustered, opening a door to the side and motioning Heyes inside. It was a square, book-lined room, full of dark wood furniture, much of it rather dusty. There were certificates hung on the dingy walls and a glass-fronted cabinet by the window that was mostly empty but did seem to contain one or two bottles of medicine and a few surgical implements.

"I've got your money," Heyes said, more than a little disturbed now. And he pulled a handful of notes out of his back pocket.

Pike put out his hand and closed his bony fingers around the proffered wad. He flicked through the notes carefully and then rolled them and put them in the top pocket of his shirt under a black pinstripe vest, shiny with wear. Heyes glanced at the far wall of the room where there was a connecting door. He was pretty sure that the back room must lie behind that door.

"Can I ....?" he asked making a move towards it.

Pike responded with raised brows. His air of befuddlement seemed to evaporate, and he reached into his vest at the waistband of his trousers and swiftly drew out a pistol, which he pointed, and then cocked, a tremor jiggling his hand slightly, just enough to make Heyes even twitchier. "No, Mr. Heyes," he said, his teeth showing in a little grin, "No, you can't. Take his gun, Lydie, if you would, please, my dear. Raise your hands, Mr. Heyes."

Heyes lifted his hands slowly. "Why are you calling me Mr. Heyes?" he asked at once, eyes on the shaky pistol, not prepared to accept anything was a done deal here.

"Cause it's your name, honey," said Mrs. Baines, plucking the gun from his belt and taking it over to a desk where she laid it down.

"Well I don't know who says so."

"I say so," Pike stated. "And I know so. I was a passenger on the 4.52 to Roaming Falls, Mr. Heyes, and I saw your face as clearly as I am seeing it now. And I heard you identified, positively. And, I never forget a face. Especially one that's turned out so valuable."

"Roaming Falls?" echoed Heyes. He had no memory of it. A large blank had just settled in his mind.

"Told him we'd never bin there," whispered a voice behind him, "but he wouldn't believe me." Heyes heard a very familiar gunlock being drawn off, an action that Kid Curry had always managed to imbue with meaning. He turned and only just managed to stop a sharp intake of breath.

Kid Curry stood in the doorway from the hall. He was leaning up against the door-frame and holding his gun with both hands, something Heyes had never seen in his life before. Despite the state of him, he was holding it firm, although drooping slightly into his right side, pushing against the wood to keep his feet. The swelling on his face had gone down a bit, but the bruising and angry, open wound to the forehead remained, and beneath all that his complexion was gray. To Heyes' disgust it looked like someone in a blindfold had shaved him with a blunt razor, and cut off some of his hair. Red-rimmed, murky eyes squinted into the room while he took short, uneven breaths.

"Emmett," Lydia Blaine squeaked. "Didn't I tell you we should tie him up? Didn't I tell you we should take his gun away and hock it?"

"Ssssh!" Pike snapped at her. "Just hush. You ain't gonna shoot me, boy. You can barely keep your eyes open."

Curry waved the gun at the doctor's chest, pitching a little, and then regaining his stance. He looked frail all right, but dangerous. Heyes galvanized himself, snatching out a hand to wrestle Pike's pistol out of a liver-spotted hand, emptying it out on the floor. He retrieved his own gun and leveled it, the action clearing his head.

"I've got it covered," he said in a commanding tone, but the Kid continued to point his gun at Dr. Pike, acting like he hadn't heard.

Mrs. Baines made a little whimpering sound, darting fearful looks between them. Heyes could tell that she expected to be murdered there and then. He felt murderous enough towards her but was sucking it in. Bandaging was hanging off Curry's ribs. He was wearing a pair of pants Heyes didn't recognize. His lips were cracked and there was a feverish glint behind the sludgy tin-color of his eyes.

"You haven't looked after him at all," Heyes said, his voice low, and shaking with a fury he felt would throttle him.

Dr. Pike looked up at the ceiling.

Heyes swung his gaze around quickly. He saw a shelf of heavy medical textbooks.

Anatomy. Physiology. Surgery. The words swam around before his eyes.

"Sit down," he said. "Both of you."

"You gonna kill us?" Dr. Pike asked.

Heyes ignored him. He'd seen keys. Swiftly he locked the connecting door, pocketed that key, and then came over to Curry's side.

"Let me take that," he said quietly, sliding the Kid's gun carefully from his hand.

Curry didn't say anything, just wheezed at him. Relinquishing his hold of the precious Colt seemed to daze him further.

"You know," said the doctor, "he won't survive out there. 'sgot something stickin' in his lungs, I reckon. See how he can't breathe right. He'll suffocate on you eventually, if'n you don't ease it somehow."

Curry laid the side of his head against the doorframe. "'d rather suffocate with him," he said, watching with indifference while Heyes picked up a roll of bandage and let it unloop. He would have liked to point out that the two prisoners would break their way out of that in no time at all, but that didn't seem helpful. Heyes was buying them what time he could. He was almost cheered by the fact that, once they were trussed, Heyes stuck his fingers behind Pike's shiny waistcoat and pulled out the wad of money.

"Don't think you've earned it, do you?" Heyes said. "And if I can find a way of getting your goddamned medical license revoked, Pike, then so help me that's what I'm going to do."

Talk of licenses made Kid Curry shut his eyes. He felt Heyes ducking under one of his shoulders to pull him out of the door. He heard the door being shut with a push of one foot, the key turning in the lock.

In the back room Heyes made the Kid sit down on the bed. There was nothing to show that any care had been taken of him at all in the last three days and Heyes could feel the blood drumming inside his skull. Curry couldn't sit upright, sinking instead into a slump against Heyes' shirtfront.

"Can you help me out here?" Heyes asked. He got the Kid's shirt on, then his sheepskin, both still on the floor where they had been dropped. Somehow he levered him to two feet to buckle on his belt and then slotted his gun inside. Whatever condition Curry was in, Heyes knew that having his gun would make him feel better.

"You need water?" he asked. Curry's head lifted. All he wanted was for Heyes to get him out of this house.

"Well I don't know, Kid, but somehow you gotta sit a horse without dying on me. You think you can do that?"

A banging came on the door across the hall, and Dr. Pike's reedy whine a second after. "There'll be a posse on your tail quicker'n you can say knife, Heyes!"

"Maybe," Heyes replied through the panels, "but I'm not so worried. I've seen how many people are left in this town." Shuffling towards the front door he muttered to Curry, "I should kill them. I wish I could. I want to."

"Easy, Heyes," Kid Curry soothed, finding his voice at that. "You ain't killing nobody."

There was silence in the house behind them as they staggered down the steps into a gathering gloom. At any second Heyes expected the tinkle of glass as Pike smashed the window to make his escape, but, like he had predicted, there was no-one out on the street to hear. Even the kids and their dog had gone.

Shitty little windblown hole, he thought grimly.

Barely two miles out of town Heyes could tell Curry was out of resistance. They'd been going at a slow enough pace, Heyes up front, able to keep that up while it seemed no-one was on their tail, but it was all too much. Heyes knew he was still breathing because the harsh sound was all he could hear behind him, but now he was listing ever further over the saddle-horn, and Heyes realized that if he fell it would likely finish him off.

He reined them in, looking around. It was quiet out here. Plenty of trees. Some rocky outcrops looming out of the dark. A wind rustled through the leaves overhead.

Hannibal Heyes slid to the ground and walked back to Kid Curry's horse. He laid a hand on the Kid's leg and said, "Gotta get you down now."

Curry looked at him but Heyes couldn't see the eyes. Very slowly Curry hoisted himself out of the saddle, letting his partner snag his weight again. He felt somehow lighter than before, like his strength and bulk had been sucked out of him in just three days. Heyes moved him along a few steps, fear tightening in his belly. How long could a man survive breathing in what sounded like half a lungful of air? Not long, he surmised. A rough and drawn-out way to go. Still, at least he couldn't be bleeding in his belly, else he'd be dead by now.

"OK," he said in Curry's ear, "We gotta get you up now."

This time he did catch the look in Curry's eyes. It was replete with disgust and momentarily made Heyes feel better. He'd seen that look many times.

Sitting behind he held on for dear life, knowing the tight grip he had to have was agonizing. Curry's horse was sent galloping madly into the night, and then Heyes turned his own mount up into the rocks. "I'm going to find us a nice cave, Kid," he said. "We'll bed down for a bit, think what to do."

In answer, nothing but wheezing.

All the while, climbing up between the rocks, and then finding a good enough spot, setting up a makeshift camp and getting a fire going, Heyes was thinking. He got the Kid settled down in the corner of what he could hardly call a cave, but it was enough to provide cover, took on water and food, got some down his partner, and then sat back on his heels looking down on the sight before him.

"This is getting to be a habit," he said eventually.

"What?" croaked Curry from his propped up position against a mound of saddle-blankets.

"Me leaving you."

A wet cough rattled out. It seemed to be a substitute for a laugh. "Where you going this time?"

"To get you a proper doctor."

Curry just shook his head fatalistically. He watched as Heyes leaned over him and extracted his gun, tucking it down inside the blanket that was drawn up to his neck.

"Fire's good for a while. Water's here. Gun's here. Now all you gotta do ..." His words caught a little in his throat. "All you gotta do, is to keep breathing."

Curry opened his mouth as if to reply but could get nothing out. Heyes kneaded a handful of shoulder. He unfurled himself and pulled on his gloves, turning his back as he did so, unwilling to spend longer looking at the Kid's drawn features. "Be back in no time," he said, businesslike.

As the clopping hooves faded away, Kid Curry stared hard into the fire. He did not want to close his eyes, because he was afraid if he did he would never open them again.

*

Dark drew in gradually.

He could only fight it for so long. It came down like a black mist, settling into his senses and coiling down his throat. All the while a solid weight had been pressing down on his chest from above somewhere, squeezing out what remained of his breath.

Through the black mist came visitations. People he hardly expected to see. His mother, looking cross like she nearly always seemed to. His sister shaking her head at him. His brothers reaching a hand down to help him up. Only they didn't help him.

The fire seemed to have gone out, but he felt no cold. He had ceased to feel his legs or arms. All he could focus on was the weight and how he could force some little bits of air in around it. It felt like he had been doing it for hours, sucking in something each time.

Dawn trickled up through the dimness, but he did not see it.

When Hannibal Heyes hailed him from a distance he supposed it was a new visitation.

"I'm here, Kid," said the unreal voice. "Lie still now. You just lie still."

Kid Curry fought his way through the mist and saw a vision. Hannibal Heyes, streaked in dust, kneeling by his side in the pale morning light with a long needle in his shaking hands.

Can I stop breathing now? he thought.

And a sharp point slid into him and split him right in two.

*

_There's water over the next hill._

A voice full of coaxing. Getting him to put one foot in front of the other.

Kid Curry frowned and opened up his eyes.

"You gotta drink, Kid," said Heyes' voice, and he felt a dribble of liquid going in the side of his mouth. It ran down his throat, making a little river in the dry basin.

Immediately, a band of steel tightened around his ribcage. More water dribbled in, and he was so busy taking it down that he almost didn't realize that, despite the band, he was breathing in and out, full lungfuls of air that made his mouth taste strange. He shut his eyes tight, expecting the weight, but it didn't come.

So he opened up his eyes again.

"Good morning," said Hannibal Heyes, who was squatting close to him with the water bottle. Then he held up his hand. "I don't think you should talk. You need to get used to breathing again."

Kid Curry just blinked at him.

"I got you right where I want you. You can't move and you can't talk."

Heyes moved away and busied himself around the fire. When he turned back the Kid's eyes had shut again, but he opened them when Heyes sat back next to him. Trying to speak he managed to produce nothing but a little croak. Heyes frowned and shook his head, but Curry seemed agitated and grabbed hold of his arm.

"It's all right, Kid, no need to get wild. You need something? More water?"

Kid Curry got his most stubborn look then. His fingers gripped down on Heyes' arm, although there was really not much strength left in them. With a huge effort he managed to expel some words, faint, but nevertheless containing some force.

"What ... you do .. to me ...?"

"Oh, is that it?" Heyes replied nervously.

"What?" Curry rasped in frustration.

"See, you had lots of air, swilling around in the wrong place. I had to let it out. One of your ribs was poking in after those guys bust it."

"You ... you ...."

"Now don't get uppity, Kid. I just went to look in one of good ole Doc Pike's big books. Figured either I could drop it on your head, put you out of your misery, or read up a bit of doctoring. Picked up some doctoring things too, and got out while they were still jawing on down at the sheriff's office. Bit of a lucky strike, I guess." His own voice nearly failed him at that point and he gave a shaky laugh. "Had to take the chance of hitting the right spot .. else ... well ..."

"Else?"

"You'd'a died."

"Hah!"

Heyes made a face. "Pike could have done it the day we brought you in. Seems he preferred you to suffer." The thick treacle of bitterness dripping off the words pained Kid Curry. He wanted to say some things, take the sting out of it, but his brain would not cooperate. His ears were filled with a fuzzy noise that kept coming and going. He made an attempt to sit up but found Heyes pushing him back down.

"No contest, Kid. You got no strength. I'm sorry, but you're going to have to lie there a while yet and let me take care of you. You're still black and blue." He grinned suddenly, a slight sparkle in his dark eyes. "And you're likely gonna be pissing blood for weeks."

"Heyes," the Kid growled. "You stabbed a goddamned... knitting needle in my ribs."

Hannibal Heyes' fixed grin softened out. He reached his hand and patted the Kid very gently. Curry's cheekbones were sharp. It hurt Heyes right in the heart. He worked hard to keep the smile on his face.

"Yeah, and if you don't lie quiet and do as you're told I'm going to do it again," he said.

Kid Curry fought the overwhelming exhaustion coursing through his system. Heyes watched him fight it, shaking his head.

_You are one ornery, mule-headed critter, Jed Curry._

But a helpless fatigue rolled over the Kid. His eyelids suddenly fell shut as if weighted down and his fingers relaxed abruptly against Heyes' forearm. Heyes closed his other hand over them. He'd stand vigil, happy to do so. He'd see the Kid through this and out the other side, and he knew what would give him the strength to do it.

In truth, he burned with unseen rage at the Websters, but so much more at Dr. Pike and Mrs. Blaine that he thought it might choke him. Their willful negligence, such casual cruelty ... Hannibal Heyes was a man who could turn away from things easily if he thought it would help a longer-term cause, neither ruled by impulse or possessed of much of a reckless streak. Behind everything his brain ticked and ticked, calm and sure, keeping him in control. But this, this felt different. This was something that tasted of acid, something dangerous that could burst out of him in a moment. Heyes felt like he was never going to forgive and forget.

Just for now, though, while he had to stand guard over their survival, he made himself shrug it down inside, and bent to pull the blankets up securely around the Kid's shoulders. Then he rolled himself up real close next to him and wondered how he was going to stand guard and sleep all he needed at the same time. Couple of hours at least, he thought. Couple of hours and then we should move on.

The Kid muttered something, and shivered a little.

*

At more or less the same moment Emmett Pike learned that the posse he'd raised had left for the Triple H outside Marionsville. Boosted by as many unpaid and aimless men as possible, it would head into the mountains at dawn.

"It's ours, Lydie," he proclaimed to Mrs. Baines, cosying up to her on the swinging seat that creaked back and forth on her front porch. "All that bounty, sure as you like."

"Well I hope they shoot 'em," said Mrs. Baines flatly. "That Hannibal Heyes coming back here and robbing you, Emmett ... he deserves the rope, for robbing a doctor of his tools."

"That he does," Dr. Pike agreed.

"We get the money either way, you sure of that?"

"Dead or alive, Lydie. That's what it means. Reckon we'll get one dead and one alive, and that'd about suit me. I intend to see Heyes standing up in court, and then being led away to jail for the rest of his sorry days."

"Or the rope."

"Yes, Lydie dear. Or the rope."

Mrs. Baines clucked in satisfaction. She glanced up at the sky. "They say it'll be getting cold up in the hills."

"So much the better," Pike said. "There's nowhere to run. Those men are going to hunt them down like dogs." And he reached under the seat to find his bottle of whisky, determined to stay more or less where he was until they dragged Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry through the dust up the main street of Marionsville and dumped them at his feet.


	3. Chapter 3

The message that got back to Wheat Carlson, presiding over supper in the main cabin at Devil's Hole, was garbled to say the least.

"They what?" he said.

"They're back," Lobo the messenger expanded, scratching his own head. "Heyes and the Kid. Just rode in from the .... Kyle's with them."

"Why've they come here?" Wheat asked out loud and then found that the rest of them were looking at him puzzled, wondering who would know if their leader didn't.

He got up hastily and went to find his gunbelt. By the time hooves were heard outside the door he had wiped his face and fingers and strapped on the belt, so that when the door opened he was standing ready in front of the fireplace, king of the mountain. Nevertheless, when the familiar black-clad figure of Hannibal Heyes walked in, he still felt like a outsider in his own front room.

"Dammit, Heyes, what in hell are you doing back here?" he greeted his former leader, peering nervously past him because you could never be sure of Kid Curry. To his relief, Heyes did not look angry, or like he was about to take back the gang by force, but he had clearly been on the road for some time. He was unshaven, covered in trail-dust and had a lean and hunted look about him.

"Hello, Wheat," he said.

"What you want?" Wheat demanded, not ready for any kind of welcome yet.

Heyes lifted a hand, removed his hat and rubbed his forehead under the thatch of gritty dark hair. "Safe haven," he said. "Can you do that for us, Wheat?"

Although the phrase might have foxed one or two of the others, Wheat knew what it meant alright. "You ain't telling me you're on the run from someone are you, Heyes? You ain't telling me you've brought a posse to our door?"

Heyes' eyes didn't have the slightest glimmer of their normal life, which made a cold finger scratch down Wheat's spine.

"There's a posse," Heyes conceded, "but we lost them two days back."

"You sure?"

Heyes nodded his head. It seemed too heavy for his neck. "Just need to rest up," he said, swaying slightly.

Kyle came clomping in the door then. "We gotta take 'em in, Wheat," he said meaningfully.

Again Wheat looked over Heyes' shoulder.

"Need help here, boys," came Lobo's voice from outside. Heyes turned around but his feet seemed weighted down by rocks. Kyle removed his cheroot and gave him a close look and then slipped back past him into the dark. After a minute more there was the sound of cursing, a bad-tempered exchange, and then Kid Curry came through the door, with Kyle hovering behind him, his eyes round as saucers.

Heyes moved aside to let them into the cabin, putting out a hand to steady Curry over the threshold. Wheat sucked in a breath and then whistled it out, which made naked irritation flash across Heyes' face.

The Kid was as dusty and unshaven as Heyes, but he mostly looked like a horse had trampled on him. Or a whole team of them. More than that, though, was the way he was standing, one shoulder hanging down, with his gun arm crooked tight into his side. He took his hat off with the other hand and gave Wheat a belligerent look, daring him to say something. There was a unhealed wound above one eye and his face had the misshapen and oddly-hued appearance that told of recent bruises, and bad ones at that. He looked sick as a dog.

"Hellfire," said Wheat. "What happened to you?"

"Doesn't matter," Heyes told him.

"You look half dead, Kid."

Wheat couldn't help the remark, shocked in the first instance at the comprehensive battering of a man who, for much of time he'd known him, had positvely radiated rude health. After another second it occurred to him that at least it might mean he wouldn't be a danger to them, and Wheat had always thought Kid Curry bore keeping an eye on. Heyes too, come to that. In fact, Heyes probably even more, because he was tricksy with it.

Kid Curry took a look around the room. "See you're keeping it nice, Wheat," he said, and although his voice managed a hint of the deadpan acid they remembered, it was breathless and dry as a dust-bowl.

"If you've brought trouble with you, Heyes," Wheat said, dragging his eyes off the Kid.

"Wheat, for crying out loud!" Heyes snapped. "There's nothing but trouble out there! Just askin for a day or two's shelter from old friends. That seem unreasonable to you?"

"Things not going so well then?" Wheat said, trying, and failing, to keep a hint of satisfaction out of his tone. "Well come on in ... there's stew on the stove. Might as well change the watch now, boys. Boys!" He clicked his fingers at the four who had been sitting at table with him. They had carried on eating while watching the entrance of their former fellows and their current leader's reaction as if it was some kind of floor show set up purely for their entertainment.

"We're not here to threaten you, Wheat. We ain't got the strength." Heyes took a hold of Curry and tugged him forward.

Fincus put bowls on the table and someone went to see to the coffee-pot. Lobo had led the horses away for stabling and Wheat went to the door and looked out, sniffing the air, like it could tell him if there was danger nearby. Kyle, relieved of his watch, came and perched on the end of a bench regarding Heyes and Curry curiously.

The Kid ate about two forkfuls of meat and drank half a cup of coffee. He sat uneasily and the hand he used to eat shook badly. The other one, his gun hand, stayed in his lap. Wheat felt a bit more relaxed to see that. Heyes just sat silent at the Kid's side, eating, his shoulder pressed into him like it was a prop to keep him upright.

"There's room in the bunkhouse," Lobo said when he came back in. "Come on and sleep, Kid. Want for me to take a look at you?"

"Forget it," Curry growled. "Had enough jokers playing doctor to last me a lifetime." Although Heyes moved as if to help him up, he shied away from the touch and struggled to his feet. He saw Wheat looking at his hand and he held it up for him. It was bound up in strips of cloth and the fingers looked raw and swollen. "Don't go thinking of testin me, Wheat," he said, leaning on the shoulder Lobo proffered. "'snothing wrong with my gun."

Heyes was the only one who didn't watch his slow progress across the floor and out the door with bated breath. Lobo, although he wasn't wanted, went out after Curry anyway and Heyes glanced up at the last and sent him a small nod of gratitude.

"So what did happen?" Wheat asked, sliding into his seat at the head of the table once the door had closed.

"He got busted up," Heyes said simply.

"A doc see him?"

"No," said Heyes.

"And who's on your trail, Heyes? And what for?"

"We haven't done anything ... got recognized is all."

"And the Kid?"

"He's healing."

Wheat snorted then. "Well it sure doesn't look like it. Listen, Heyes, you c'n stay here for tonight. Get your sleep and your food. We'll give you what we can. But I want you out of here by tomorrow evening, you hear me? We got our own plans."

"Oh yes?" Heyes was surprised at the little frisson he felt to hear that.

"Yes, and it's none of your business and we don't need none of your advice."

Heyes held up his hands. "Going straight, Wheat. Don't need no more trouble than we already got. But can you not give us more than one night? You can see how he is."

"Tellin you, Heyes. We don't want you here."

"Wheat," said Heyes. "C'mon. Please."

Wheat was satisfied then. Why, he'd practically got Hannibal Heyes to beg him, and it looked uncommonly like he was disillusioned with the law-abiding life already. "I'll think on it," he said grandly. Heyes laid down his fork and picked up the Kid's plate.

"Mind if I finish this?" he said.

Wheat waved him ahead. "Shoot," he said. "If the Kid can't eat then he must be bad."

"He's bad enough," said Heyes, looking up as Lobo came back in the door. "What do you reckon?"

 

Lobo made a face. "Bad enough," he agreed. "Runnin a fever."

 

"All the time," said Heyes. "Worse at night." He circled his shoulders stiffly. "They did some damage."

Kyle tutted. "The Kid gone and plumb irritated somebody, huh? Bet it was over some perty little swish of skirt."

Heyes just shook his head at them. He finished up the second plate and pushed it aside. "Going to bed," he said.

"Good to see you, Heyes," said Wheat as he got to the door. Heyes turned and looked at him narrowly. Then he went out.

It was getting dark. The patchy grass and higgledy-piggledy corale looked the same as ever. So did the tumbledown cabins and gurgling, brown-stoned creek, with the spiky hills quiet in the background. Nothing changed. It should feel like some kind of home, but it didn't. Heyes had really hoped never to come back. He picked his way across to one of the smaller buildings, where he had not slept before. That thought almost made a smile come to his face.

How are the mighty fallen.

Inside the cabin there was a bunk on each side of the room with a table and chairs in between. A dirty basin of water stood on a small stand in one corner, with a pail on the floor next to it. A broom had been left leaning by the door and there were several shirts drying on a rail by a small, blackened stove. Someone had thrown some bedding down on the floor in a heap. Over on the far bunk Kid Curry was stretched out on the lower mattress, still shrugged into his sheepskin under some blankets. His boots were tumbled under the table and his gun-belt hung over his head. Heyes walked over and went on his haunches, hauling up the blankets with one hand, the other keeping him steady on the floor.

The Kid sighed. He was awake, for sure, but he didn't bother to open his eyes. He hardly flinched when Heyes laid a hand over his forehead, then tucked the back of three fingers into the open collar of his shirt. The low-grade fever he'd been carrying was beginning to notch up again.

"Feels like you're giving up on me, Kid."

Curry cleared his throat slightly but didn't speak. He was too bad even to reassure Heyes anymore, and in any case he was still pissed that they'd come to Devil's Hole in the first place. Wanted to keep going south, find some heat and sea air. They'd had some words about it, but it was more or less hopeless arguing when Heyes was flinty-eyed with determination and he was hardly able to string more than five or six words together at a time.

"Trust me," Heyes had said. "Rest up with the boys for a week or so, then when you're stronger we'll talk about .... Mexico, if you insist ... and I'll have a plan."

About Pike. He wasn't going to add that bit out loud. What to do about Pike.

"Try and get some sleep," Heyes said now. He levered off his own boots and began unbuttoning his shirt. Hot bath tomorrow. Wash some clothes. Eat some more. Sit in the sun and think. He climbed up to the top bunk, wrapped himself in blankets and then hung his head over the edge, looking down. Heyes looked down until he was pretty sure the Kid really was sleeping. Then he heaved himself back up and lay flat on the pillow. It had to help, sleeping on a bed. Surely it had to help.

In the morning he woke with a headache and a powerful thirst, but he felt ready to make their case a little more bluntly. He supposed he'd have to tell them about Pike, even though his own appreciation of what had been inflicted on his partner in Marionsville was still on the incredulous side. Leaving the Kid sleeping he went out to relieve himself in the fresh air, splash water from the brown-stoned creek over his face and the back of his neck, and then stumped across to the main cabin.

There was no-one but Wheat around.

"Bin thinking, Heyes," Wheat said, as soon as he came in. No good mornings. No hope you slept good.

"Oh yes?" Heyes sat at the table and picked up a cold biscuit. There was something almost comforting about the quaint domesticity of the Devil's Hole. Someone had made biscuits, there was a pot of coffee on the stove and the table was covered in crumbs and slops which made him grin through his mouthful.

"Yes," said Wheat. "Thinkin."

Heyes waited but nothing else seemed forthcoming, so he got up again and helped himself to coffee. After one sip he decided this was Lean's coffee. Strange that he should remember such details.

"I planned a job," Wheat then said in a rush, "in about a week's time. Mail train. Now we're nine strong right now, but I figure we could probably use one or two extra men. What do you think, Heyes? You in? Don't know that the Kid will be up to it ... but he can stay here and rest up while we're away. There now. That's my offer."

Heyes drank more coffee.

"So you do need my help," he said.

"Damn it, Heyes, don't even think about it ... I don't need you taking over .... if you come in on this job then you're just part of the gang and takes your orders from me like everybody else."

Time was, thought Heyes, when he could have finagled Wheat, Kyle and the rest of the them, into his point of view, whatever the circumstances, at the drop of a hat. They'd always fall for some line he would spout and become willing followers again once they'd got their initital grumblings over and done with. Seemed like the months without Heyes and Curry had sharpened up Wheat's sense of independence.

Damnit.

"Well," said Heyes, "suppose you tell me what this job is, Wheat?"

Wheat gave a little smile then. "No you don't, Heyes ... you ain't getting me that way. If you're in, you'll get the details night before same as everyone else. Just like you used to do, you and the Kid."

"I couldn't possibly come in on a job without knowing what it is," Heyes said. "That would be stupid."

Wheat's eyes crunched up, as if he had felt the broadside but it hadn't quite made contact. "Well that's the deal," he said. "You can earn a week's rest for the Kid if you say yes. Otherwise ..."

"Otherwise?"

"You gotta leave, Heyes, simple as that."

Heyes battled his inner fury. He didn't like it that Wheat was in control. He didn't like it that he was having this conversation without the Kid at his shoulder. Somehow he didn't know how to respond when he wasn't responding on behalf of both of them. And he was in despair at the thought that he'd got a choice between the law and criminality laid in front of him so soon.

"Give me some time," was what he said.

"Uh-huh, I see. Well, you got until sundown."

"Su-?" began Heyes, then subsided. He helped himself to the last of the biscuits and then walked past Wheat on his way out of the cabin.

"That's it," Wheat called after him, "You go on and talk it through with him. I'll be waiting."

Talk it through with him?

Heyes hoped that'd be possible. When he got back to the sleeping cabin he found Kid Curry standing up half naked in front of the big chipped basin, washing in cold water. The bruising along his spine and round his kidneys had faded to yellow and brown but the extent of the marks and the thought of the pain they'd caused still made Heyes' blood boil. It was getting very tiring, always having his blood boiling at such a rate.

"Well good morning," he said, his initial feeling of optimism at seeing Curry on his feet evaporating when the Kid turned around. His eyes were still heavy, his posture one of eternal discomfort.

"Don't tell me, Heyes," he said, "Wheat wants us to leave."

Heyes was impressed. "How'd you know that?"

Curry laughed mirthlessly. "Well can you blame him? If you was still leader here would you want old faces turning up and bringing trouble?"

"If I was still leader here," Heyes said, a catch in his voice, "then I'd sure as hell find space for old faces in need."

Curry toweled himself down half-heartedly. "Would you now?" he said.

"I'm not arguing with you, Kid," said Heyes, feeling anxious. "Wheat's asked me in on this job they're doing, says you can rest up til it's done. I've got until sundown to decide."

"And?" said the Kid, reaching for a clean henley shirt hanging over the bunk post, "what you going to decide?"

"What do you think?"

"I think we should leave and go to Mexico."

Heyes tried to think of a new way of saying it. "Kid, you can't keep going out on the road. We won't get as far as Mexico before you fall asleep and don't wake up."

"Maybe so. But all we're doing now is running while you think of ways of getting your own back on Pike."

"Well, so I'm saying let's stop running ... just for a week. It'd do you the power of good."

Curry narrowed his eyes to slits and took a walk across the room to him. "Heyes, are you plain out of your mind? A few wild words from Wheat Carlson and you'd be willing to risk our amnesty? What's the matter with you?"

"You're what's the matter with me!" Heyes shouted, loud enough to cause the Kid to take a shocked step back. He regarded Heyes doubtfully from a distance of several feet.

"Oh go on away and leave me alone," he said eventually. "You'll make the right decision, Heyes. Must be a fool, but I trust you."

"Go and eat breakfast," Heyes fluffed, not sure whether he was relieved that the Kid hadn't reacted angrily, or scared by his passivity.

By the look that crossed his face the thought of breakfast seemed to fill Kid Curry with a sudden nausea. "Sure," he said. They parted in uneasy silence, Curry over to the main cabin and Heyes across the yard towards Wheat and Kyle who were standing talking a little way away.

"He's a bag of bones," Kyle commented as Heyes approached, motioning at the Kid as he went through the door.

Wheat planted his feet apart and crossed his arms over his chest. He couldn't tell from Heyes' face whether he had his answer or not.

"Still thinking, Wheat," Heyes said straight off. He was damned if he'd tell them before the allotted hour. "We're just going to hang around thinking until sundown. If that's all right."

Wheat snickered. "Hannibal Heyes can't make up his mind," he said, amused. "Well there's a first. Reckon I got one over on you with this, Heyes."

Kyle looked amused, too, although obviously not quite sure why.

"Well don't mind me," Heyes said pleasantly. "You boys just get along doing whatever you need to do. I may just have me a bath if you can spare the water."

Wheat waved him ahead, grinning toothily. "We c'n spare enough," he said. "'slong as the Kid don't spend as long soaking it in as he used to."

They both got a bath and a shave in tubs of water that cooled too rapidly, and Kid Curry shivered and grumbled his way through his turn, a phenomenon that pained Heyes as it was so out of character. While Curry splashed and winced outside the back door, Heyes picked at bits of food and hung around listening to the boys. They had more coffee after, and sat outside the main cabin in the struggling sunshine, Heyes reading a month-old newspaper that he had found in the store-room being used as a potato sack.

Curry closed his eyes, wishing it felt warm.

"They're going to play poker," Heyes said after a while, casually shaking the paper and peering over the top of it.

"Heyes ..." the Kid said. There was warning in his voice, and an overlay of worry. "Why don't you just leave them be?"

"Hell, Kid, are you turning wise on me?"

"Just tell me you won't ... irritate them," Curry said on a little wheeze.

"Listen, you go on back and sleep as long as you can," Heyes said. "I'm just going to keep them ... occupied." He laid down the paper and nodded in a way that was supposed to put all Kid Curry's fears to rest.

The Kid grinned at him fleetingly. He knew Heyes was trying to do his best by him, but he also knew he was plotting, buying more time before he had to make his decision. Frankly, although he had plenty to say on the matter, all his efforts, both mental and physical, were entirely taken up by trying not to give in completely. It was incumbent on him, he felt, to contribute to the partnership by not collapsing. By early afternoon he was drifting off in his preferred half-upright position against stacked pillows and blankets, cheeks a little flushed, breathing quietly but carefully, even his unconscious self striving not to stretch his lungs too much. And Heyes was sat around the table in the cabin with five of the gang and two bottles of whisky.

"Like old times," Kyle said unguardedly, filling Heyes' glass to the brim. It seemed to please him, and there was no-one to remind him that Heyes always won since Wheat was out on the ridge doing his watch.

"It's good to be back, boys," said Heyes. He took two quick gulps of the whisky, and it felt dangerously good.

*

Kid Curry woke when he got cold.

Possible answers to the question of where he was whirled into and then out of his head. The first piece of reality seemed to be fingers poking under his shirt, pressing on the tender spots, jabbing at his ribs, probing and sharp. A ungentle hand touched down where it hurt the most and he opened his eyes on a room the size of a barn. Above loomed a ceiling obscured by dense shadows. On either side of the bed dark, empty space rolled away, further than he could focus upon. He sat up with a familiar twinge of pain in his side.

"Heyes?"

No answer so he lay down again, shutting his eyes against the annoying sensation that the room had expanded while he was asleep. It didn't do much good. If anything, it seemed even bigger when he closed his eyes against it, and he felt sure that he was about to get stuck in the belly with those chilly fingers once again.

"Jus' leave me alone," he growled.

_"Hurts to breathe, huh?"_

The voice was close enough to his ear that he could feel the air move.

_"Tsshh ... looking at me with them sweet blue eyes, like you think you can read my mind."_

A calculating, slow pressure, searching for the broken bone.

_"You're a bad boy, kinda bad boy we don't care for, needs to pay for his sins. I want to hear that you're paying."_

"Heyes," whispered the Kid, the name ending on a rising note of panic.

_"Hurts to die, don't it?"_

It certainly hurt to die.

_"Tell me then, you thieving, ignorant outlaw. I ain't going to stop until you tell me."_

With Heyes not there, there was really only one thing to hang on to and he grasped for it so hard he felt himself falling. It was written in his stars, had been since birth. Whatever they say, whatever they do, don't ever, ever give the bastards the satisfaction.

So help him, Kid Curry wasn't going to say a word.

*

Too much whisky.

Heyes had the thought when it was too late. The boys, without Wheat's controlling presence, had all got a touch of old-comrades-in-arms excitement and he had fallen for it too. A couple of them had even gotten as far as reliving old times, in which Hannibal Heyes had been the best leader of a gang of outlaws that there had ever been. He drank to it, far too many times.

Dark had fallen, as Heyes knew it would. Hours had passed in the timeless way they did in the Devil's Hole. Heyes was supposed to have decided and decreed, but Wheat was late back from the ridge and Heyes couldn't resist being clever, he just couldn't.

He pushed back his chair and got unsteadily to his feet.

"Aw, you're not leaving?" Fincus drawled. "We're jus' getting going."

"Only um... four dollars and seventeen cents left in the pot, fellers," Heyes said, "I can't hold anymore," and he jingled the pocketful of coins weighing down his vest pocket. "It's been a rare plesh ... a rare ple ... 'sbeen rare, boys, really rare."

A chorus of hoots. Hannibal Heyes could stay conscious while liquored-up, longer than any of them, but he stopped making sense much sooner.

"Mebbe you'll be joining the gang then, Heyes?" Kyle questioned hopefully as he weaved his way to the door.

Heyes waggled his fingers over his shoulder. "Mebbe," he said.

Out in the dark he walked in a few circles to try and clear his head, reprimanding himself under his breath. He went to take a drink of water and then headed towards the cabin. Inside the door he took a few steps in the general direction of the bunks, guided to them by the sound of muttering.

"You know, Kid," he said, "I could make this job of Wheat's so much easier. Heck, I could probably carry it off even if he didn't tell me what it was," and he laughed out loud.

Then he stumbled over something on the floor and nearly pitched headfirst on to a bunk. His boot had made contact with something soft. Turning, he nearly stumbled again but the cloudy sensation in his head was evaporating and he went down to his knees instead. The pitchy dark of the cabin was alleviated just by a glow from the stove and what moonlight had crept in through the unshuttered window.

"What you doin' down there, Kid?" he said anxiously, one hand patting along a shoulder and then threading through sweaty hair. That Curry spent half his life delirious at the moment had forced him into adopting numerous methods of wordless communication.

Curry's head rolled on his neck, making a crunching sound against the wooden boards.

"Trying to get away again, huh?" Heyes went on. He pulled the Kid's shoulders up into a clumsy hold, wanting to convey security. It wasn't the first time he'd heard Pike visiting in the night although he'd never said a word about it. There had been a small spike of fever, Heyes could tell, but now it was shuffling away again. In a while the Kid'd be shivering fit to bust and then there'd be some hours of boneless sleep. Right now he made an inarticulate sound of protest, but it wasn't against the drunken death-grip Heyes had on him.

"First, do no harm, Dr. Pike," Heyes said through gritted teeth as he levered Curry into more of a sitting position on the way to getting him back to bed. "I'm gonna kill you for it one day, I swear to God I'm gonna kill you." He hated the emotion, the sound of it coming out of his mouth, almost as much as he hated Pike.

"What's going on in here, Heyes?" said a voice at the door, and Heyes found himself out from under the Kid, on his knees and with his gun in his hand before he even realised what was happening. The Kid seemed at least partway conscious because he didn't let himself fall, just dropped a hand down on the back of Heyes left leg.

Wheat was standing there, lit by a lamp he held in his hand, staring at the gun pointed at him. There was a second of disbelieving silence on both sides and then the gun was slowly lowered. Despite the cold sweat prickling all over him, Hannibal Heyes relaxed, attempted to re-holster the gun and found he was still several hours from sober. His heart was hammering and he could almost have burst into hysterical laughter at the picture of himself drawing a gun so damn fast. The weapon clunked on to the floor.

"We're not going to risk the amnesty, Wheat," Heyes said, reaching out behind him to clasp one hand around the Kid's forearm. "I can't come in on the job."

Wheat's sillhouette gave a shrug. It was more or less what he'd expected. He was glad because he hadn't been able to imagine how he would have pulled off a job with Heyes looking at his every move, but there had also been a sizeable part of him that had felt a rising confidence in the outcome if Hannibal Heyes was going to be any part of it.

"Seems fair," he said magnanimously. "But you're going to have to leave."

"Give us a few more nights, won't you, Wheat, for old times?"

"Cain't do that, Heyes. Too dangerous."

"Let me get him well," said Heyes. How he hated sounding desperate in front of Wheat Carlson. In front of anybody, but especially a man he could not help guiltily feeling was still his subordinate. Wheat shook his head. He was revelling in this, but trying hard not to show it.

"Now, Heyes, if you taught us anything, it was that we have to think of the gang first. If you cain't see your way clear to coming in with us, then I ... and I'm the leader, Heyes, so I gotta make these decisions, even if I don't like it ... well then, I cain't agree to you staying. You're eating our food, drinking our whisky and sleeping in our beds, and there's no knowing when this crazy doctor will get here and take us all down. That's it, Heyes. That's all I gotta say on the matter."

It was an impressive speech, Heyes conceded. Wheat had indeed learned from him. He was right, too, about protecting the gang's wider interests, but Heyes was confounded that loyalty counted for nothing in today's Devil's Hole. I would've done it differently, he told himself, if it was still me in charge.

_Still me in charge._

What a mess of regret and memory there was in those four words.

Wheat left the lamp but he didn't stay to help with the Kid. Heyes had to half lift, half drag him back to the bunk, and when he'd got him laying down again he sat hunched up on the edge for a while, his head spinning at breakneck speed if he closed his eyes. He had fallen into something of a doze when at his back Kid Curry coughed and stirred.

"Water?" Heyes whispered, shifting around and rubbing one hand clumsily on top of the pile of blankets.

Curry's teeth clattered on the tin mug that he was offered; his hands shook half the water down his chin and he pushed it away. "Good draw, Heyes" he croaked.

Heyes guided the mug back towards him, held his hands on it steady. "Yep," he said, his own voice shaky with whisky. "See, I don't need you."

The chesty laugh he received in reply made him smile at least. He put the mug under the bunk and they stared at each other through the pale red light.

"Hard for you, isn't it?" Kid Curry said at last, a hand snaking out from the blanket and poking Heyes in the ribs. "Not bein in charge."

"Damn right it's hard!" Heyes came back at him. "But I'll learn."

*

They were down off the mountain before Dutch had peeled the first grubby potato of the day.

And it wasn't just Heyes who was learning. Kid Curry was finding things out too.

Like how to ride in a certain position, one arm cushioned around his ribs, hunkered slightly down, his good hand gripping the reins with a kind of numb strength, while Heyes led the way in miserable silence, sitting on his frustration at not being able to move fast enough, turning slightly every so often to make sure he was still being followed.

Like interpreting the world through a peculiar haze in which the trees looked uncommonly tall and the sunshine felt impossibly cold on his skin.

And like how to convince Heyes that he was doing good, because he felt like he had to repay him for his care somehow.

Once out of Devil's Hole, they carried on moving in the same direction as before, away from where they last saw Dr Pike's posse, and vaguely south. Heyes wired Lom Trevors from a place called Bamburg to see if he could pick up any intelligence. Lom's pithy response told them that things had changed.

_Expect bounty_ read the telegram that came back.

The Kid shrugged and turned away when it was handed to him on the porch of the telegraph office, forcing Heyes to explain what he thought it meant. Instead of the hapless group that had pursued them out of Marionsville hoping for a cut of the reward money, now they were being tailed, at a distance of maybe a day or two, by a single man.

"Good news," Curry said, and Heyes couldn't read the voice, couldn't catch either irony or hope.

"God damnit, Kid!" he exploded and got stared at by those sluggish, guarded eyes under the tan hat.

"Not good news?"

Heyes swallowed down his jangling nerves and spoke slowly. "No, Kid, not good news."

"I can deal with one gun, Heyes, a lot easier than a bunch of 'em."

"But a single bounty-hunter'll move quicker, get to us faster. And what makes you think you're going to be dealing with anything?"

""m not dead yet, Heyes." A plodding response, long on weariness, just a little bit short on fighting spirit.

"So you keep saying."

"Must be true then."

Heyes dug in his pants for coins to pay for another message. He stumped back inside, the Kid on his heels, and pulled another sheet towards him, scratching with the pencil while shielding the page from Curry's view, but the Kid leaned in close and grabbed his wrist, pushing it aside so he could read. His fingers felt ice cold.

"Pike?" read the message.

"You're getting crazy about this, Mr. Smith," warned Kid Curry. He actually had a bit of life in his voice all of a sudden. Sounded worried, exasperated. He screwed up the paper and directed a very small smile over the counter of the telegraph office. "We're done here."

"I might never be done," Heyes mumbled to Curry's back when they were outside the door again.

Kid Curry wheeled round with surprising speed and arrested him with a thumping slap on the chest. "Will you just drop it, Heyes! You're making me tired. Would you think about something else for a change ... like where we're going? You ever gonna get round to having your talk with me about Mexico?"

"Mexico!" Heyes responded with spirit. "You must be crazy! Any bounty hunter worth his salt will figure we'll go south. No, Kid, what we gotta do is go north again. As far north as we can get until we think he's lost us for sure."

"What?"

"North, Kid. Out of Bamburg by train. North."

Kid Curry spluttered for a second but managed to hang on to his temper. "And if we go ... north ... where it's cold, remember, and you know I hate the cold ... then ... then will you give up on Pike?"

"Damned if I can understand how you don't want to wrap your hands round his scrawny neck and..."

"Heyes, I don't like you like this. You could get us into more trouble than anything I've ever managed when you're like this. You got me away from him, we lost his fool posse, now let him sit on his bony behind and dream of a bounty he'll never get."

"But how do you square it, Kid?" Heyes persisted, and the Kid was sorry to see him so deeply wounded. "You spend every blessed night trying to get away from what he did. I knew he hadn't taken care of you, but ...well there's a word for people like him... a word... I can't recall what it is though."

"Cracked?"

"Worse than that," Heyes grumbled.

Kid Curry adjusted his posture, tried to stand a little easier. He knew it wrung Heyes' heart, same as the way Heyes' helpless fury wrung his own.

"Well whatever kind of a man he is, Heyes, when we get north are you going to give up stewing over him?"

The fact that they were standing here having a robust discussion about it brought Heyes some clarity of mind. "Sure," he said, thinking that he should be prepared to give up pretty much anything as long as the Kid was strong enough to fight him about it.

"Good," said the Kid, satisfied.

They had a night and a day to wait before the next train north and twenty minutes after it left Bamburg Kid Curry was asleep in a graceless sprawl against Hannibal Heyes' shoulder and gave him a dead arm and a crick in the neck that he thought might just have been worth it. Heyes sat staring out of the dark window, his mind running faster than the wheels on the track. Burning a hole in his jacket pocket, folded into a small square, was the return telegram that he had collected just before they got on the train.

_Got dirt on doctor. Keep your plan legal and take care of Jones. Lom._

The Kid was still sleepy when they stepped off the train at the end of the line, wrinkling his nose gainst the exceptional chill he was sure he could detect in the air.

"Are we safe for now, Heyes?" he asked, grabbing at the nearest corner of black sleeve as they came out of the station, his eyes darting back from the expanse of unfamiliar street to the glimmer of Heyes' eyes, like two hot coals in a corner of a dark room.

The trust nearly made Heyes' heart stop still.

_In a world spoiled by mean spirits and twisted souls, Kid?_

The last weeks had taught them both a fiercer mutual reliance than ever, but Heyes was still shocked to realise that his own understanding of their situation had gone way beyond Curry's. Knowing the night obscured his weary smile, he slipped a hand round the back of the Kid's neck and squeezed.

For encouragement.

For love.

"Not ever, Kid," he said quietly. "Not ever."

 

-ends-


End file.
